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Question: What is marital modesty? And is it absolutely necessary for two married spouses to be modest towards each other in their dress, conversations and acts?

Answer: Marital modesty is modesty within a marriage and concerns the modesty and purity the husband and wife must have towards each other in order to have a fruitful and good marriage. Modesty within a Christian Marriage is very important.

Ecclesiasticus 7:21 “Depart not from a wise and good wife, whom thou hast gotten in the fear of the Lord: for the grace of her modesty is above gold.”

A wife must be modest even before her husband, and a husband should be modest even before his wife. Whoever teaches immodesty to married couples, leads them away from Christ, and harms the Sacrament of Marriage. For the relationship between a husband and wife is a reflection of the relationship between Christ and His Church. Should Christ be immodest with His Bride, the Church? Should the Church be immodest before Christ? So then, neither can a husband and wife be immodest with one another, neither in thought, nor in word, nor in deed. For immodesty leads to every sexual sin.

Marriage is not an exception to the eternal moral law. Natural marital relations for the purpose of procreation is morally good only when it is practiced in accord with morality. Lust within marriage is gravely immoral. If the spouses use one another for mere sexual pleasure, apart from love, faith, fidelity, hope, apart from the primary goods of marital relations (found in the procreation and education of children), then they have sinned against the end, and honesty of marriage. And all unnatural sexual acts are intrinsically evil and always gravely immoral, even within marriage.

But lesser, although still grave sins are also possible concerning sexuality within marriage. Even for a husband and wife, it is a sin to speak or act in a licentious manner, to speak or act as if marital relations were base or were merely for pleasure, to speak or act with immodesty and impurity. Even spouses must have respect for the dignity of the body, and a holy fear of God, in order to avoid various misuses of the body and of sexuality.

A just war does not justify all acts of violence within that war. And a holy marriage does not justify all sexual acts within that marriage. The eternal moral law prohibits intrinsically evil and gravely immoral sexual acts, as well as acts that are not intrinsically evil, but are sinful due to intention or circumstances. So the thoughts, words, and deeds of immodesty are not justified by marriage.

Modesty within marriage requires the spouses to treat one another as whole persons, with respect and affection, and with a holy fear of sin. Modesty within marriage requires the spouses to view the marital sexual act as integral to the Sacrament of Marriage, and not as a mere source of entertainment or pleasure. Modesty within marriage requires the spouses to subjugate the lesser and baser motive of sexuality (pleasure and quenching of concupiscence), to the higher motives of sexuality (the procreation and education of children), and to the marriage as a whole. Respect for the human body as a gift from God requires the spouses to act with self-restraint or even self-denial, and to avoid excessive indulgence in even lawful acts.

St. Augustine, Against Julian, Book IV, Chapter 2, Section 6: “I could not have called good that concupiscence of the flesh which the Apostle John said is not from the Father, but I call conjugal modesty good which resists the evil of concupiscence lest, when aroused, it draw men to unlawful acts.” (The Fathers Of The Church A New Translation, Vol. 35, pp. 170-171)